Just a warning, this is going to be a graphic triggery post.
It's very difficult to subject a viewpoint character to rape and stay true to the consequences of rape without making it a story about the rape and how that character tries to move on with their life afterward.
The comparison to murder and other crimes has been brought up. I will say this. For me personally, the two are not even remotely on the same playing field. I say this as someone whose very close friend was murdered by a creep who ran over her with a bulldozer, on purpose. I saw the photographs of my friend's mangled body, and the horror of that will never leave me. I'll never not cry when I think about it.
Just last year, a close cousin of mine was stabbed to death trying to break up a domestic violence dispute at his neighbor's house.
And in the last year, two guys I knew well enough to call friends, that I didn't hang out with regularly but were nice people I liked, were shot to death while sitting in a cafe minding their own business. They were musicians. I still have their CDs, and I still cry when I hear their voices.
The biggest difference between the two types of crimes is one happened to someone I care deeply about, and one happened,
to me. I don't know what it feels like to have a knife blade driven into my chest, or my body crushed under a ton of gravel and then splintered by the track of a bulldozer. Or to hear shots ringing out around me and see my friend dying next to me and realize, I'm dying too. For people who have lived that, and survived it, I imagine reading about something along those lines would be triggery and unpleasant. Or they'd see that the author got it wrong or used it for a cheap thrill, and be frustrated, angry, and feel exploited.
I do know what it feels like to be held down against my will, my life threatened, and for another person to penetrate my body in ways that horrified, terrified, and made me feel utterly helpless, disgusting, etc. I can't even find adequate words without triggering myself at the moment. And then for that same person to break down crying afterward, blame me, and tell me they were going to kill themselves if I ever told anyone what I made them do, which set it up to happen again, and again, and again...
Which brings me to another point, which is that many rapists know their victims. We're taught all kinds of stranger danger as children, which is good but all my life I expected a rapist to be a hobo lurking in the bushes. Not a friend that was known, trusted, and generally nice to me and bought me presents. Sex predators often spend a great deal of time grooming their victims so that they have access to a person that they can exert total control over, and not worry that their victim is going to run and tell. It involves a great deal of abuse and manipulation, which is extremely damaging and difficult to recover from even without the rape aspect.
I do think that if I was there and witnessed those murders in person, and had those helpless horrified feelings as it happened before my eyes, I'd feel very differently about reading books with that kind of content. And it's not that I'd think they were horrible books, just that they wouldn't be something I could get through. Before I was raped, I knew people it had happened to, and it made me mad and sad. I hated the people who did that to them. But I could read a book where it happened and get through those scenes. I don't read those books any more.
I'm trying to word things in a way that brings it back to what I'm trying to say, and now I'm all out of sorts so please forgive me.
So this was meandering (yeah I do that too much, meander that is), but the point is, women (and men), even when we agree about the true nature and horror of rape, may have different reactions to the ways this crime is portrayed in a story. Each victim of these crimes has a unique reaction/recovery as well.
Feelings are not right or wrong, but a writer should be aware of the different ways people may react to something he or she writes. As the previous post said, rape is something that is so integrated into our cultural assumptions and biases in some way, that it's particularly hard, perhaps, to portray it in a way that doesn't possibly reinforce at least some of the assumptions/stereotypes about it.
I think Roxxsmom sums up my point here. When something deeply traumatizing happens to you personally, there's a large chance you're going to have things that trigger the feelings you felt when it happened. There are a large number of people who have been raped who also read books, so there's a decent chance a sizable chunk of your readership will be triggered or angered by the mishandling, or even the mere presence of it. Personally, I can read about people getting stabbed or hear about it on the news, and I feel a flash of sadness and think,
poor Roger. But what happened to him doesn't impact my ability to function day to day. It doesn't give me the same visceral disgust and horror. I write about people being stabbed in my stories, and read them in other stories without having a break down.
To try and bring it around, an atrocity committed in the story should realistically impact the story. If someone is murdered in the story, it should have an impact. A single murder can drive the plot for an entire novel.
Same thing as with a war zone. What a horrible environment, and it should impact your character's life, outlook, and the story.
So why would rape be any different? To me it feels like some authors equate the assault of rape with the assault of getting knocked out in a bar fight, when in reality it's more like getting a shotgun blast to the chest and then that getting infected, then having trouble breathing for the rest of your life because of the damage the injury did.
Sorry if that kind of went off on a tangent. Hopefully something in there was useful and relevant.
. I'm so sorry.
